Ethnographic Film as Exchange

Abstract

This paper discusses how film impacts on the relationship between researchers/filmmakers and their collaborators in the field. Film can function as a gift that strengthens reciprocal relationships and it is a medium that facilitates dialogue and intercultural exchange. The author argues that film has great potential for eliciting cultural differences and enhancing intercultural communication as people relate to the same visual material from their different perspectives more easily than in the case of written text. Through ‘feedback’ and the ‘parallax effect’ film contributes to a reflective space both for the researchers and their local collaborators. Local collaborators often have different stakes in the film and the filmmakers may find themselves in the role of circumstantial activists with only limited control over the film's use and impact once it is produced.

Keywords:

• Ethnography
• Filmmaking
• Dialogue
• Exchange
• Feedback
• Circumstantial Activist

Acknowledgements

As always I am grateful to my adopted family, friends and collaborators on Baluan who have looked after me and taught me so much about their culture and about myself. I thank Christian Suhr and Steffen Dalsgaard for their stimulating collaboration in the Baluan film projects and Christian Suhr, Rosita Henry, Daniela Vavrova, Sasha Rubel, Pia Otto and Anne Mette Jørgensen for useful comments on this article.

Notes

1. See Davey 2010 who argues that visual anthropology has become a mature sub-discipline with refereed journals during the past twenty years.

2. A recent exception is Deveson's (2011) very interesting article on the involvement of Yolngu participants (NT, Australia) in the Yirrkala film project.

3. Probably the most intense use was made of my article on traditional rights to natural resources (Otto 1997), that became incorporated in the course material for the training of land magistrates.

4. His films engendered strong emotions and, at times, strong resistance. For example, the well-known anthropologist Marcel Griaule, who was Rouch's teacher and supervisor, demanded that ‘Les Maitres Fous’, now considered one of Rouch's master pieces, be destroyed! (Grimshaw 2001, 90)

5. Rouch contributed the idea of feedback to Robert Flaherty, one of the first ethnographic filmmakers and well-known for his classic film ‘Nanook of the North’ (Feld 2003, 12–3)

6. Professor Helle Vandkilde from Aarhus University.

7. Of course this would make the film much longer and only interesting for the people in it.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ton Otto

Ton Otto is Professor and Tropical Leader at the Cairns Institute and Professor of Anthropology at Aarhus University